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Information About

Hilaire Penet





LIFE AND WORKS


Unusually for a Renaissance composer, more is known of his earlier life than his later; indeed nothing at all is known of him after 1520 . He was probably born in 1501, since his age is given as 14 in a document of 1515 , and he was probably born near Poitiers . He served as a singer in the papal chapel from 1514 , when he arrived there in the care of Carpentras , until 1520 when he left never to return. Since much of his music was published in the 1530s and later, he may have still been alive then and working elsewhere; presumably had he been still working in association with the papal chapel, there would be records of his employment.

Penet is most famous as the composer of ''Descendit angelus Domini'', a four-voice Motet which was used both by Palestrina and Costanzo Porta as source material for Mass composition. The motet circulated widely in Europe and apparently was quite popular; Penet can be seen as a kind of Renaissance One-hit Wonder on the strength and popularity of this refined, elegant composition. He also wrote two settings of the Magnificat which have survived, another motet (''Virgo prudentissima''), as well as a handful of secular Chanson s, all of which are settings of current popular tunes.


REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING


  • Article "Hilaire Penet," in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vol. London, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. ISBN 1561591742

  • Gustave Reese , ''Music in the Renaissance''. New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1954. ISBN 0393095304



RECORDING


  • Pomerium, ''Musical Book of Hours.'' Archiv 289 457 586-2. Contains the five-voice motet ''Virgo prudentissima'', published in 1534.